Golf finishes 6th at Destin
Young takes 16th overall to lead Bobcats in first tournament back from surgery
The No. 6 GCSU golf team competed in the Sandestin Collegiate Championship this past Monday and Tuesday and finished with an overall team score of 883, which earned them the sixth place spot in the tournament on the par 71 course.
“I was not satisfied with our performance,” Head Coach Jimmy Wilson said. “In our first two rounds our highest score was 75, so I was happy with the way we played our first two rounds, and then Tuesday just wasn’t our day.”
In the Sandestin Collegiate, which was hosted by No. 11 University of West Florida, nine of the top 25 teams in the country played in the tournament.
Claiming the first place title was Lynn University who finished with a team score of 864 and finishing just two strokes behind them was No. 16 Columbus State University.
With a team score of 874, Delta State University completed the tournament in third place, while Drury University finished fourth with a score of 875.
The Sandestin Collegiate host West Florida came in fifth with a score of 876.
The Individual winner for the tournament was Delta State’s Chase Smith, who shot a 68 in Monday’s opening round and a 73 in the second round.
Smith finished Tuesday’s round with a 70, giving him the first place title and an overall score of 211.
Leading GCSU was senior Joe Young, who had recently been unable to play at the start of the season due to shoulder surgery, finishing his first round with a 72 and shot a 70 on Monday’s second round.
Young completed his final round with a 76, finishing with an overall score of 218 and tying for 16th in the overall tournament.
“I felt like it was a good start back to my season, I like being in the lineup and being able to play again,” Young said. “I was really pleased, especially the first day, with the way I stuck it out. I didn’t go to the tournament with any expectations as far as how I expected to play or what I expected to do coming back and I was pretty happy just being able to get out there and play again. I look back on it and reevaluate it as a pretty good welcome back for me.”
Coming in second for the Bobcats and tying for 25th in the tournament was freshman Gavin Harper who finished Monday’s first round with a one under-par score of 70 and shot a 74 in the second round.
On Tuesday, Harper finished out the tournament with a 77 and an overall score of 221.
Finishing just three strokes behind Harper was sophomore Patrick Garrett who completed his first round with an even par score of 71 and shot a 72 in his second round to finish off Monday.
Garrett shot an 81 in Tuesday’s round to finish with a 224, tying him for 35th in the tournament.
Completing Monday’s first round with a four under-par score of 67 was senior Billy Shida.
Shida shot a 75 in Monday’s second round and completed Tuesday’s round with an 83, giving him an overall score of 225 and tying him at 40th.
Bringing up the rear for GCSU and tying for 50th was redshirt sophomore Taylor Smith, who opened with a 75 in the first round and finished out Monday with a 73.
Smith finished out Tuesday’s round with an 80 which gave him an overall score of 228.
The Bobcats are back in action on Oct. 4 to 5 to compete in the Aflac Invitational hosted by Columbus State.
“We need to improve on our consistency and our ability to put a bad hole behind us, it’s called a bounce back stat. Instead of carrying over the bad feelings that maybe get generated from having a bad hole, we have to be able to put that behind us, put it to rest, move forward and start fresh on the next hole,” Coach Wilson said. “To prepare for the Aflac Invitational we’re going to do the same thing we always do, the guys are going to practice, have practice rounds and max rounds. We had a bad day on Tuesday but we’ll see how the guys bounce back next week.”
Posted by 
